Abstract
One in every twenty-five persons in America is a racial/ethnic minority who lives in a rural area. Our objective was to summarize how racism and, subsequently, the social determinants of health disproportionately affect rural racial/ethnic minority populations, provide a review of the cancer disparities experienced by rural racial/ethnic minority groups, and recommend policy, research, and intervention approaches to reduce these disparities. We found that rural Black and American Indian/Alaska Native populations experience greater poverty and lack of access to care, which expose them to greater risk of developing cancer and experiencing poorer cancer outcomes in treatment and ultimately survival. There is a critical need for additional research to understand the disparities experienced by all rural racial/ethnic minority populations. We propose that policies aim to increase access to care and healthcare resources for these communities. Further, that observational and interventional research should more effectively address the intersections of rurality and race/ethnicity through reduced structural and interpersonal biases in cancer care, increased data access, more research on newer cancer screening and treatment modalities, and continued intervention and implementation research to understand how evidence-based practices can most effectively reduce disparities among these populations.
Highlights
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.Rural populations in the United States comprise as much as 20% of the total population [1]
Rural populations often fare worse than their non-minority ruRural racial/ethnic racial/ethnicminority minority populations often fare worse than their non-minority rural and urban minority counterpartswith withregard regardtotothe thesocial socialdeterminants determinants of of health health and ral and urban minority counterparts health outcomes, outcomes, including including cancer cancer outcomes outcomes [39,40,41]
We examined the extant research on cancer disparities among rural and racial/ethnic minority populations, extending from the social determinants of health that affect cancer disparities across the continuum
Summary
Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander populations have been affected by discriminatory legislation and policies (e.g., exploitation of Chinese laborers in the late 19th century, exclusionary immigration policies, internment of Japanese Americans in World War II) [15,16] These historic traumas, in addition to continued discriminatory policies and interpersonal biases, have limited minority populations’ access to healthcare services, put them at greater odds of engaging in poorer health behaviors or being exposed to environmental carcinogens, make them less likely to receive optimal cancer treatment, and contribute to their greater cancer burden across the continuum [17,18,19,20,21,22,23]. Population Estimates Program [31]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
